While sitting here, I noticed a large yellow orb-weaver. Desiring to see to what extent he wound defend himself I tool a twig & commenced tapping him. At the first touch he ran heavily up towards the end of a blackberry branch where one of the radii of his web was attached. Here he straightened out, and bringing his four front feet to a point in front of him, the next pair, short ones, to a point in his abdomen, and his two long hind pair, behind his body, he commenced whirling. This was doubtless to confuse the attacker, and indeed I could scarce watch him for his dizzy whirling.
Prodden again, he ran down to the web proper & commenced swinging powerfully & swiftly back & forth with much of the same principle as children “work up” on a swing,—covering a distant [i.e. distance] in the air of more than three inches.
Charles Burchfield, August 15, 1914